ISLAMABAD: Foreign Secretary, Ms. Tehmina Janjua Tuesday said Pakistan was playing an important role in eliminating the menace of terrorism from the region and desired to enhance cooperation with P5 countries.
Speaking at a daylong international conference titled “Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO); Future Prospects and Regional Connectivity", organized by Center for Global and Strategic Studies (CGSS) here, the foreign secretary said the upcoming elections in India could not determine the future of this region.
“Pakistan has also taken US, China and Russia on board in several peace initiatives taken. The country has time and again asked the international powers to initiate peace dialogues for durable peace in the region,” she added. On the occasion, the speaker from China, Professor Sun Zhuangzhi said it was necessary to position the SCO as a new type of regional cooperation organization at the international level. He said that the expanded SCO should not change its current way and focus of work.
The characteristic of SCO was to establish a new concept of cooperation and adhere to equality and mutual benefit and opening to the outside world, he added. From Russia, Dr. Leonid said that since the very beginning of independence, the Central Asian republics had faced such a problem as ensuring regional and ethno-confessional security and the geopolitical situation in Central Asia was influenced by the political instability and conflict zones which could be resolved from the platform of Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
From Uzbekistan, Bakhtiyor Mustafayev said that positive experience had been achieved in jointly solving the intra-regional security problems in various fields. He said that Uzbekistan with Tajikistan and Kyrgyz Republic signed the plan of complex measures for 2018 – 2019 on the issues.
Ambassador of the Republic of Kazakhstan to Pakistan said that the SCO was emerging as one of the significant multilateral platforms in the region as it vowed to fight the real time challenges being faced by the member states. From Kyrgyz Republic, Mr. Seitzhan Apyshev, said that the cooperation in the field of culture was one of the most important activates of the SCO as it helped to strengthen long-term good neighborliness, friendship and cooperation between our traditionally close friends not only geographically, but also in spirit of peoples and countries.
He said that the fundamental basis for preservation and coexistence of different national cultures was the development of international cultural exchanges. From Belarus, Prof. Elena Dostanko said that SCO was an organization which was aimed to achieve closer cooperation in the region. Mega projects like CPEC, BRI and Eurasian economic region have huge potential for the economic stability of the region.
He said that this sectoral cooperation boosts the relations among regional states. From Iran, Seyed Majid Ghafelehbashi said that like SCO, Iranian foreign policy was also focused at multilateralism and had an advancing neighborhood policy. Similar to SCO, Iranian foreign policy also aims to maintain sovereignty of states and to eradicate extremism.
CPEC is also deemed important by Iran and we hope that these mega projects will result in forging cordial relations between nations. Representing Pakistan, Ambassador Syed Hasan Javed recommended that there should be an advisory board comprising of members who have knowledge of three regional language i.e. English, Russian and Chinese. He said that there was need to establish SCO centric Think Tank, civil society and bank. “We must sign trade agreements to remove trade barriers and ease in the visa regimes” he added.
Major General Syed Khalid Amir Jaffery HI(M), (R) President CGSS said that SCO was a powerful platform for partnerships to promote peace, to build mutual trust, and spur economic development for shared prosperity with the confidence that we would be able to change the world for the better.
Zahoor Ahmed, Additional Secretary, National Coordinator of Pakistan for SCO, Ministry of Foreign Affairs said SCO had emerged as a natural platform and representative of 3.2 billion people. “Prime Minister Imran Khan is using Pakistan’s foreign policy to develop ideal bilateral relations with all states. SCO have a greater potential to forge strong ties between regional states and Pakistan can contribute to the SCO forum by sharing its experiences of fight against terrorism and being a significant part of the US peacekeeping missions,” he said.
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